My Life After 40

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Getting an excuse of George Goh back from USA, the old pals meet up again at Kiryo Puchong. Not so excited as compare to previous year meet up. But more sentimental as all are more mature toward life. When we are still felt young at heart, we are still unavoidable to talk about our childrens instead of ourself. KL life never easy, one word RUSH. I am really appreciated for being able to live life in slow pace, after looking at the life of KL folks.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Been out of blog quiet sometimes. Most of us now using social media to communicate, especially Facebook, which really change our daily life. With the smart Phone, it even push to the level whereby we all are inter connected, in regardless where you are. Unless you choose yourslef to live in the cave, else the information, connection will keep on pop up to your Laptop, Smartphone etc.

Went for the Indian Temple Festival Last week with Mike, the US Travel Writer who rent my apartment to write down his travelling stories for over past few years. He wanted to find out what is life from the different perspectives of the world. He told me when he travel in China and was invited to give a talk in a college about his travel, there is a girl throw out a question to him "if you are travelling, who is taking care of you parent ?". He was shocked as it never came across to his mind, since from his early teaching from his parents. However, at later stage, he then understand the different value of the Western and Eastern about the Family, and it is quiet a fun to learn that. His dad taught him, children is like a Arrow, when times come, the arrow will fly out as far as possible.

Plenty of chat over the Dinner table, and also he is so fascinated about the Kavadi. There is one phrase which he learnt from a Russian which I particularly Like it about Life

LIFE IS NOT ABOUT HOW MANY DAYS YOU LIVED BUT HOW MANY DAYS YOU REMEMBERED.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

My last blog was Oct 09, and actually copy from RPK. Busy is an excuse not to blog, and I will rather to put it as run out of topic to blog about.

Anyway, just wanted to drop few lines to remember my 46 years of earth journey. Busy uploading my photo in my 80's and 90's into the FB yesterday, found out that all of the photos during 80's we look so cheerful, Happy like nobody business. Really missed those days when we were young and innocent(maybe be not).

Ek's mother passed away yesterday and me and my wife visited him a while ago and we talked about our after life. After seeing his mother sickness suffering prior to last breath, he said it is better to carry lot of sleeping pills when we are old. To me, I prefer to dive into 100M depth call myself End of the Journey.

Guess If I can afford myself when I am getting older, I am going to build a Retirement Resort and invited all the old pals to stay together. It should be fun, when all the personal daily need is taking care by the professionals(of course need to pay some month fees, and if you default your payment by your offspring, all services will be terminated, ha...), everyday when we wake up, we are talking about what to do, what to eat, and what to play. Maybe a Mahjong, Ping Pong, Aerobic, shopping trip for LV (eyes only or course), Drama, TV, Movie, Football (Tai Zhi better), lot of activities to spare our time. Most of all, we can always repeatedly talked about our 80's, 90's 10's.

We can hold a farewell party prior to the departed of our friends, and live life to the fullness. Sound nice isn't it. Well we need to have a dream, only then we have something to turn it to reality.

Friday, October 2, 2009

If I were to say that a certain very senior military officer told me that………..many --in particular those from the legal fraternity -- would say that this is hearsay. If I relate something that someone else told me then that is not admissible as ‘evidence’.In court, if I relate what I have been told, this is not strong enough. The person who told me that story has to be subpoenaed to appear in court. He or she would have to personally relate whatever it is he or she told me. My ‘second-hand’ version is not acceptable. And he or she has to be a witness to the event. It has to be what he or she saw, and not what he or she was told by yet another party. If not, this would, again, be hearsay.The same goes for documents. If I adduce a document in court and say this is what was given to me, this too can’t be accepted as evidence. The maker of the document must be subpoenaed to court to testify that he or she is indeed the maker of the document and that it is his or her signature on the document. Even Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had to go to court to testify in a Bank Negara forgery case back in the early 1980s when he first became Prime Minister. Without Dr Mahathir’s testimony that he did not sign that letter and that the letter is, in fact, a forgery, the prosecution would not be able to prove its case and obtain a conviction.Such is the law of evidence. What someone told you does not count. Even if you can support your statement with a document, that too does not count. The source of the information must personally appear in court and take the witness stand and testify that he or she did in fact say that, or prepared that document, or signed that letter, or whatever.That is why in my various criminal cases the government chose to charge me under sections of the law where the burden of proof or evidence is not required. Or they chose to detain me without trial where the issue of evidence need not be argued in court. For example, the government says I lied. Yet they won’t charge me for lying -- like for signing a false declaration. Instead, they charge me for sedition and criminal defamation where the truth of the matter is not material to the charge. Even if I told the truth I am still guilty and can be sent to jail.The government realises that I may have witnesses who are prepared to come to court to testify that they did indeed say what I wrote and that means I did not lie. So, when my lawyers argue about the falsity or truth of what I wrote, the prosecution jumps to its feet and reminds the judge that the court must ignore this argument and just focus on whether I did or did not write what I am alleged to have written (which means I am guilty of a crime) and not whether what I wrote is true or false (because even if it is true I am still guilty).In court, we dabble at great length on the laws or evidence and about what constitutes hearsay and what is admissible and what is not. And you can get sent to jail just because you related what you were told but fail to bring the teller of the story to court to testify that he or she did indeed relate this story to you. If you say something that is a repeat of what someone else told you, and you can’t drag that person to court to back up your story, then you are in deep shit. You will get sent to jail.Now, superimpose that onto religion. You tell me that someone told you what someone else told him or her that yet someone else told him or her about what happened 3,500 years ago -- and this story has been transmitted through 140 generations over 3,500 years before they even had pen and paper to record all this -- and I am expected to believe it.That is 140 generations over 3,500 years. All of them are of course now long dead and gone. So we have no way of confirming this story from eyewitness accounts. And we call it the gospel. Yet when I relate what someone witnessed three years ago and who is still alive and one week ago he told me what he witnesses, that is a lie and I get arrested and charged for this ‘lie’.Religion, for all intents and purposes, is based on hearsay. And it is hearsay because none of those people who lived 3,500 years ago is still alive today. And they never wrote down what they are alleged to have witnessed. It has all been related by word of mouth and passed down through word of mouth over 140 generations. Have the events and stories the witnesses related 140 generations ago been kept intact these 3,500 years or has over time the stories been corrupted?They did an experiment once. They asked ten people to sit in a row and the lecturer whispered a story to the first person. The first person then whispered to the second person, who then whispered to the third person, and so on till the last person. It took only minutes for the story to get transmitted down the line from the first to the tenth person.The tenth person was then asked to relate the story back to the first person and the story the tenth person related was a far departure from what the first person had related. So there you have it. In a mere few minutes, a story told by one person has changed so much by the time it reaches the tenth person sitting in the same room a few feet away. Imagine a story related by 140 generations over 3,500 years halfway around the world. How much of the story remains uncorrupted?So religion can never be about facts. Facts would be when the witness himself told you what he saw. After 140 layers of ‘mouths’ over 3,500 years, facts no longer exist. And by saying ‘facts’ I am using the standards of the law of evidence applicable in a court of law. Anything other than eyewitness accounts is no longer fact but hearsay. So religion, having happened 3,500 years ago, is therefore hearsay and not facts.So we need faith when it comes to religion. We can’t apply facts because facts do not exist. How can facts exist when the storyteller has long since died and his story has been passed down by word of mouth over 140 generations? If you lack faith you will reject all these stories. If you insist on applying the proper laws of evidence you will never believe what they tell you about events that happened 3,500 years ago where no witnesses to the events remain alive today.But we live in a democratic society and if you wish to believe that the moon is made of cheese and that the world is flat and that the sun revolves around earth then that is your choice. You are free to believe what you want to believe. And if you wish to believe that something that is said to have happened 3,500 years ago is true in spite of there not being any witnesses alive today who can confirm these stories then that is also your choice. That is what democracy is all about.However, we have certain people who believe in what happened 3,500 years ago, in spite of the fact they can’t prove it, and then they expect us to also believe this. If we refuse to believe this they will get very upset. They will arrest us. They will kill us. They force us to believe what they believe and will punish us if we do not.And this is why the world is facing a lot of problems today. The 6 billion or so inhabitants of the world hold dear stories about what happened 5,000 years or 3,500 years or 2,000 years or 1,500 years ago. And they label themselves with whatever religion they subscribe to. Many have since been killed off. The majority exterminates the minority so those who follow minority religions have long since become extinct.The majority rules; the minorities got sent to their graves many generations ago. So the religions we follow today are the religions of the victors in the game of wipe out all those who do not believe what we also believe. And we now believe the religion of the victors, not the religions of the vanquished. And this is accepted as the correct and true religions because only these religions still exist while all others have been wiped off the face of this earth.What is truth and what is farce? We don’t know and we don’t really care because we base our beliefs on faith and not on evidence. And our faith is mostly based on what our parents and their parents before them believed in.I have met a Muslim ulama who took me for lunch in McDonalds in Washington. He ordered a beef burger and I had fish. He laughed and said he understands that I am from Malaysia so I am just doing the ‘Malay thing’ by eating fish and not any non-halal meat. But beef, even though not slaughtered by a Muslim, is halal, said this ulama of Arab descent who is very senior in the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).I have met a Muslim ulama who drinks wine. Wine is okay, said the ulama, but not beer, whisky or brandy. And he quoted a verse of the Quran to convince me.I have met Muslims from Morocco who smoke during the fasting month of Ramadhan but will not eat or drink till the sun goes down.I have met Muslims who only accept the Quran but not the Hadith. And I have met Muslims who only accept 500 of the Hadith but not the 7,000 that other Muslims accept. And I have met Muslims who take the Quran from its allegorical meaning and not from its literal meaning. And I have met Muslims who translate the Quran from Aramaic and not Arabic, which they say is the correct language of the Quran.So, even amongst Muslims there are many opinions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Some even say that Judaism, Christianity and Islam do not exist because all three are actually the same religion and that Abraham’s teachings and not the teachings of Moses, Jesus or Muhammad is the correct religion to follow.Who is right and who is wrong? That is for you to decide. And since it is all based on faith with no evidence -- in the context of the law of evidence acceptable in the justice system that we follow -- then you decide the right and the wrong.But don’t force others to also believe what you believe. Most religions impose their beliefs on others. Since, due to lack of evidence, you can’t prove what is right and what is wrong, you have no business forcing others to also believe what you believe which is all based on faith.If ‘religionists’ can understand this then the world would be a much better place. Malaysia would be a much better place. And those hundreds of millions who were slaughtered over the last 3,500 years in the name of the ‘true religion’ need not have died needlessly.This, the religionists, can’t seem to understand. And this is because they have this high and mighty and righteous attitude where only they are right and all others are wrong. It never occurred to them that maybe they are wrong and the other chap could in fact be right. Or that maybe everyone is wrong because at the end of the day religion is all about unproven stories told 140 generations ago and passed down by word of mouth over 3,500 years with no evidence to support the stories or evidence to prove that the stories had not changed or become corrupted over time.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

A friend once asked me whether I consider myself a Muslim. I asked him: first of all, what is your interpretation of Muslim? He then asked me what is my interpretation of Muslim. And I gave him my interpretation of Muslim: one who believes in God, the One God, and does what God commands, which is to serve mankind.

Then you are a Muslim, he said.

I know of people who set up Christmas trees every year and place presents below it and get drunk on Christmas Eve. They may even go to church once a year for Christmas Mass. But they believe that whites are superior to non-whites and the genocide of non-whites is no great tragedy to mankind.

These are not Christians.

I know of people who go to Mekah every time they face corruption charges so that they can pray in the ‘House of God’ for divine intervention in beating the corruption charge.

These are not Muslims.

I know of people who perform the pilgrimage to the holiest of temples every year and yet have scores of murders to their credit.

These are not Hindus.

I know of people who place altars and burn joss sticks every morning in their massage parlours that front for brothels.

These are not Buddhists.

To these people, they are ‘religious’ because they perform the rituals associated with whatever religion they believe in. But that is as far as their religion goes. Compassion and service to mankind is not at the top of their priority list. All their actions are guided by greed, lust, vanity, egoism, arrogance, and all those other anti-social attributes you can think of.

It is time Malaysians stopped ‘talking’ religion. Religion is not in the rituals you perform. Religion is not in the clothes you wear. Religion is what is in your heart.

Some Muslims suffer from a very serious fundamental problem. The problem is they do not follow the fundamentals of the religion. Islam is the religion of ‘there is no god but God’. See the small ‘g’ and capital ‘G’ in the two god words? It is spelt that way for a very good reason.

For that matter, many would argue that Islam is not even a religion. It is a way of life. You breathe Islam, so to speak. In other words, every beat of your heart ticking away ticks for Islam. You do not need rituals to prove you are a Muslim. The fact that you are breathing already means you are Muslim because when you breathe in and then out that breath translates to Islam.

If you do not grasp what I am saying then I can't help you. It just means you look at things from a very superficial and on-the-surface perspective. You need to go deeper than that. You need to feel the pulse on your wrist and be able to say, “This is Islam.”

And that is what happens when religion, any religion, has been reduced to rituals, ceremonies and the manner you dress. You lose the essence of the religion. And this is when we start arguing about trivial issues while we allow the essence of the religion to pass unnoticed.

Does it matter what women wear, or how a man dresses, or whatever, when below those external coverings lurk maggots and worms eating away at our soul? I suppose this is a statement many religionists, Muslims included, would not be able to comprehend.

If we believe in God then we would believe that God created us. And would God play games with us by creating us of different faiths so that we may kill one another? All religions believe in the beginning of time and the end of time. And the Abrahamic faiths believe that we are all descendants of one man and one woman, the first two beings on earth.

Would this not then make us all brothers and sisters? And we may be brothers and sisters who follow different paths to the same destination but is this not God's wish and something absolutely beyond our control?

Who are we to question God's wisdom in making one brother/sister a Jew, another a Christian, yet another a Muslim, and others of the Hindu, Buddhist, etc., faiths? Do we know better what is God's grand design? Dare we shun God's wise decision by shunning those who do not follow that same path as us in arriving at the same destination?

Yes, this is certainly food for thought this Sunday morning in a prelude to the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan. God has said He knows better what He has planned for us. Maybe it is time to not question or dispute what this plan is because surely, if he is really God who is the Creator of us all, He would have been able to create all of us of one faith and avoid all these disputes and killings in His name.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

They say there are two types of people. There are leaders and there are followers. 1% of the people are leaders while the majority are followers.

Within these two categories are further sub-categories. There are good people and there are bad people.

Within the good people category, they can again be subdivided into two more categories. There are people who are good by nature and there are people who are good because they are scared of being bad. If they were not scared of being bad then they would certainly not be good because being bad is more fun than being good.

And within the bad people category there are people who are bad because they are bad by nature while others are bad because they feel they can get away with being bad without getting caught or that later they can always repent and become good whereby they would be forgiven for all the bad they have done.

And this is why people need religion. Religion stops you from being bad and forces you to be good. Without religion there would be no stick and carrot. You get the stick when you are bad and you get the carrot when you are good. It is a form of punishment and reward system. You get punished when you do bad and you get rewarded when you do good.

In short, religion works on the concept of the bribery system. You are bribed through the punishment and reward system when you do bad and good respectively. And since most people are susceptible to bribes they would conduct themselves accordingly depending on whether they wish to be rewarded or whether they do not fear the punishment and do not care much for the rewards.

Over thousands of years mankind has had to conduct itself based on what religion tells them they should do. Religion has been the guideline for our conduct long before the invention of the police force and the legal system comprising of laws and courts.

The history of religion, however, is a history of violence, persecution, cruelty and brutality. In the name of religion mankind has been subjected to much suffering.

The question is who invented religion? And is religion something that God sent us or something that man created to conveniently oppress and suppress fellow man?

I do not wish to engage in a debate as to the existence of God or otherwise. There are some who believe that there is a God (or Gods). Others believe in the existence of a higher power although they are not quite sure what it is and whether God is the correct word to use for this higher power. Then there are others who believe that man is the product of nature and not of a higher being named God or whatever.

I leave it to you to decide how you came to be.

All religions have what we could call holy books. The ‘main three’, also called the Abrahamic religions, have the Old and New Testaments and the Quran. A study of all three holy books would reveal that there are a lot of similarities and overlapping doctrines. You would not be mistaken if you were to think that the three Abrahamic faiths are actually one faith divided into three sects. Of course, these three ‘sects’ are further divided into many sub-sects who are at most times in conflict with one another.

Man has a natural instinct to be bad. But they are forbidden from being bad basically because the religion they believe in forbids it. If the religion they believe in were silent on the issue then most would choose to be bad rather than good. But they have no choice but to be good because they fear that if they are bad they would receive punishment and not receive the rewards promised to good people.

You could say that most people are not good by nature but are reluctantly good. It is not that there are no good people who are good by nature. There are, although they would be in the minority. And you will find that most of the people who are good by nature do not have any religion. Some do not even believe in God. They are good just because they are, by nature, good and for no other reason -- in particular not because they believe in the system of rewards and punishment that religions propagate.

Has religion succeeded in its job of turning us into good people? Or has it instead turned us into hypocrites? How many of us are good because it is in our heart and how many are good because we have no choice but to be good? If religion were silent on what constitutes good and bad and if there are no rewards and punishment for being either what kind of person would we become?

That is something to ponder upon this Sunday. And before you adopt that holier than thou attitude and start moralizing, ask yourself: are you really a good person who has earned the right to preach or are you actually a hypocrite who is not really good but is just a coward who does not dare become a bad person like how you would rather be if given that opportunity?

THIS ARTICLE ACTUALLY SPEAK OUT MY DEEPEST MINDSET WHICH WONDER ME SINCE MY CHILDHOOD. EVER SINCE MY BRAIN WORKED RASIONALLY, I ALWAYS ASKED MYSELF "IS GOD CREATED MAN OR MAN CREATED GOD?". POINTS TO PONDER. THUS I CHOOSE TO BE JUST BE MYSELF. RESPECT THE UNIVERSAL AND BE MYSELF; ANSWER TO YOURSELF NOT OTHERS.